


Where in the world is Barbara Rockwell?

by Solshine



Category: Genghis Khan - Miike Snow (Music Video), Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?
Genre: F/F, but if I have to ship it you bastards are going down with me, probably the weirdest ship I've ever written, romantic crime, theft of world monuments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-24 08:29:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6147710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solshine/pseuds/Solshine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barbara meets someone in prison who does villainy a little differently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where in the world is Barbara Rockwell?

**Author's Note:**

> Don't tell me how to live my life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She's still new at villainy. That's her excuse for why they take her in on a minor bomb threat, a rookie mistake that she really should have seen. Her self-platitudes don't help her much in prison. She lies in her bunk, hating the world, hating him, hating both of them. She's so full of hatred she feels like she hasn't got room in her for bones and blood.

The cell door opens and another woman is locked in with her, the door clanging shut with a sound that screams in her nerve endings.

“Oh good, I get top bunk,” the woman says in a voice like velvet. Barbara’s eyes shift over to her--the woman is standing over her, smirking from under a waterfall of wavy brown hair half in her face. On her the orange jumpsuit looks somehow like couture.

“Carmen Sandiego,” she says, extending a hand.

“Barbara… Rockwell,” answers Barbara, just barely remembering to use her maiden name. You’d think prison would be a strong enough reminder. She returns her eyes to the underside of the mattress above hers.

“A pleasure,” says Carmen, taking back her hand, not seeming bothered by the snub. “Don't worry, I won't be in your hair for very long.”

“They transferring you or something?” Barbara says.

“Or something,” Carmen agrees. She sounds like she thinks it's very funny. But then, she's sounded so far like she's thought everything was very funny.

Barbara goes back to her hatred.

\---

That night she's woken by the prison wall exploding outward.

There's a helicopter outside, with a crane arm coming from it holding part of the wall by the bars of the former window. Carmen jumps lightly down from the upper bunk like a cat. She turns and holds a hand out to Barbara like before.

“My ride’s here,” she says. “Like to come along?”

Barbara sits up dazed in her bed. Her heart is hammering from the very loud awakening, blood rushing through her brain and her limbs, telling her to _fight something,_ anything. She looks at the woman in front of her, dazed. Carmen is still smirking, like she never stopped since she walked in the cell.

Barbara takes her hand.

\---

“Do you have a--whatever you call it. A lair right now?” Carmen shouts over the noise of the helicopter.

“No,” shouts Barbara back. “It was repossessed.”

“Headquarters, if you please, Sarah,” Carmen yells to the helicopter pilot. The young woman nods her multicolored head and blows a bubble with her gum. Barbara is fairly sure she should be wearing a helmet.

There's a ruckus in the prison behind them that she can barely hear, sirens and searchlights. It's stupid that she's never felt more like a villain until now, but there it is. The blood is still pumping under her skin, and she stares down at the prison with her eyes bright and glittering as it disappears. She doesn't notice Carmen watching her, smiling.

\---

“Headquarters” is a penthouse apartment with a breakfast nook and a fireplace and a sectional leather sofa that could seat half of her old cell block. The first thing Carmen does is vanish into the bedroom, and emerge having swapped her jumpsuit for red track bottoms and a black sweater. She makes the combination look elegant.

“This doesn't seem low key,” Barbara notes, standing in the middle of the living room.

“I'm not a low key person,” Carmen responds, going to the kitchen.

“Aren't you concerned they'll find you?”

Carmen shrugs one shoulder as she gets out a bowl. She makes pouring cereal look elegant too.

“What were you in for?” she asks, sitting down on the couch with her cereal and crossing her long legs. A cat materializes from nowhere and jumps up on the couch to rub against her, leaving ginger fur all over the black sweater. Carmen scratches its head. “I believe that's the traditional get-to-know-you in the big house, and we didn't get around to it.”

“Tried to bomb my ex-husband’s morning commute train,” she says. “You?”

“Stole the Taj Mahal,” Carmen says. Barbara stares at her. “You might've heard about it.” She shrugs again. “They put it back.”

\---

Barbara just sort of… moves in with her. Carmen offers to share her bed, with a smirk that says that means exactly what Barbara thinks it does. Barbara sleeps on the couch, which is big enough to be a bed anyway. Carmen doesn't press it.

They don't necessarily talk a lot. Barbara got tired of filling silence with cheerful chatter a long time ago, and Carmen is comfortable with it in the way of a woman accustomed to living alone. She doesn't seem to do much; she spends a lot of time sitting in the L of the couch, legs slung over the back, tapping on her laptop. Barbara tries to fill some time with cleaning, but Carmen is a naturally neat person and hard to clean up after. Some nights she cooks, some nights Carmen cooks. Some nights they order takeaway. Nobody ever comes to take them back to prison, and after a week or so Barbara stops waiting for it.

Sometimes in the evenings, Carmen pours two glasses of wine and tells stories of capers she's pulled. Most of them end with a narrow getaway and the loot lost, or Carmen in prison. She doesn't seem to mind this.

“You leave them hints and everything,” Barbara says, confused. “You _want_ them to catch you?”

“What's the fun of running if nobody chases you?” Carmen says, exactly as though that makes sense and isn't _completely crazy._

“Do you ever even keep anything you steal?” she asks, a bit exasperated. Carmen’s lips curl up into a slow smile. She puts down her wine on the coffee table and walks over to a cabinet, then opens it up and takes something out. She walks over to Barbara and lays it in her lap. The thing is slightly smaller than a loaf of bread, and much heavier than she expects. It looks just like…

“An Easter Island head?” she says, frowning. Carmen grins at her through her hair. “Wait,” says Barbara. “This isn't a real--?”

“How do you think you go about stealing a world landmark?” Carmen says. “Basic shrink gun. Thing is hell on my curio cabinet though, had to have it reinforced.”

She sits down next to Barbara, very close, and they both sit looking at the statue in silence.

Barbara feels something very like awe, but she couldn't tell you exactly at what.

\---

A couple weeks in, Carmen returns from one of her rare excursions to find Barbara with her laptop, scowling.

“What's the matter, sweetness?” she asks.

“My ex-husband is planning a weekend vacation to Paris,” she says, “with the man he left me for.”

“What are you going to do?” Carmen asks, sitting down lotus style at the other end of the couch.

She stares at the picture of them she's found, a happy family just like she always tried to make them. The picture is perfect, everyone smiling, the kids giggling, everyone gathered close and radiating affection and contentment. The only problem with it is that nobody seems to have realized she's not in it, replaced by a happy stranger.

“I was thinking poison,” she says. “Or maybe try firebombing again. The plane they're taking, this time.”

“Steal the Eiffel Tower,” Carmen suggests. “Or the Arc du Triomphe. Or the whole Louvre.” Barbara looks up from the picture. “It would ruin my Paris vacation,” Carmen reasons.

“What,” she says, “is your obsession with stealing landmarks?”

Carmen looks straight at her, through the mist of her hair, and her dark eyes feel like they're burning holes right through Barbara.

“When they go missing,” she says simply, “people notice.”

Barbara feels like she's been slapped.

Carmen stretches her arms over her head. “Anyway,” she says, “Paris is boring. You ever been to Brazil?”

\---

They go to Brazil and steal the Christ the Redeemer statue. Carmen shows her how the shrink gun works and Barbara shoots it herself. She watches all hundred and twenty five feet of it disappear into Carmen’s satchel, and they turn and bolt as the uproar begins.

The blood is buzzing under her skin again, and as Carmen laughs and grabs her hand she feels herself smiling. She keeps smiling as they run. Not a smile to prove anything to anyone else, just for her, and when was the last time that happened?

They end up in a tiny mountain restaurant with a hand painted sign, where everyone apparently knows Carmen. They hang her red hat and trenchcoat up on a peg near the door, which doesn't seem particularly low key, but. Well.

Carmen insists there's this black bean stew she absolutely has to try. Barbara acquiesces and orders it, but Carmen feeds her the first bite of her own stew anyway, bringing the spoon to her lips with a cheeky grin. She tastes it. It's as delicious as Carmen said it would be.

Barbara reaches over and pushes the hair out of Carmen’s eyes, and looks at her. Carmen watches back, patient, smiling slightly. Barbara leans across the tiny, wobbly table, and kisses her, and Carmen weaves a hand into her hair and hums in pleasure. 

She tastes like sugarcane liquor and breaking out of prison.

\---

“What really burns you about your ex?” Carmen asks later, stretched out in a feline way on their hotel bed. (Her cat is sleeping in the window. Barbara doesn't know how Carmen got it here.) “I mean, what makes you _so_ angry? Is it just that he left you? Did you love him that much?”

“Hell of some pillow talk,” says Barbara, standing by the window, peeling a mango with a balisong. The other woman doesn't respond to that, just watches her. Barbara cuts a sliver of mango and puts it in her mouth, thinking as she chews.

“I can't even tell anymore whether I loved him,” she says. “I hate that I worked so hard for something that he's got now without even trying. Somebody waltzed into my life and made it the life, made him the family man, that I couldn't.”

“And you want a family man, do you?” Carmen smirks, folding her arms behind her head. Barbara smiles. She cuts another slice of mango.

“I do miss my kids,” she says quietly, looking down at her hands.

“When was the last time you saw them?” Carmen asks.

Barbara rolls her eyes. “Well, when you're imprisoned for attempted murder of their father plus a few dozen bystanders, judges aren't very eager to give you visitation rights.”

“Let's go pick them up for the weekend,” says Carmen.

It takes a moment for her to figure out Carmen isn't joking. “What,” Barbara says, “just you, me, the cat, the kids, and Christ the Redeemer?”

“Sure,” Carmen says.

Barbara laughs. “Why not,” she says.

\---

They pull up outside the school in a sleek red car with the top down. Barbara's hair is down too, and her face and arms are sunkissed from Brazil. She’s a little surprised the kids recognize her when she barely recognizes herself.

“Mommy!” they shriek happily, running over to the car. Apparently her ex-husband was not concerned enough about the possibility of her taking them to warn them. Dick.

“Hey sweethearts,” Barbara says. “This is my friend Carmen.”

“Hi Carmen!” the two of them yell. Carmen grins and waves from the driver’s seat. 

“You guys wanna go on a vacation?” They agree eagerly, and she reaches back and pops the backseat door open for them. “Get in.”

“Don't we need suitcases for vacation?” says Alex as Barbara leans over the back of her seat to help him with his seatbelt.

“We’ll buy things on the way,” says Carmen. “It'll be an adventure!”

Barbara finishes buckling herself back in, and Carmen pulls something out of the glovebox and hands it to her. “You want to send a postcard?”

She has no idea why Carmen has an Italian postcard in her glovebox, but she laughs and takes it. “Why not,” she says again. She pulls a pen out of her purse and makes it out to the address where she left her old life. She doesn't miss it at all.

_Off with the kids to the world’s oldest surviving republic. See you there, if you can find us._

_Love, Barbara (and Carmen)_

**Author's Note:**

> For bonus crime bucks this round do you know where they should start looking for the kids? ;)


End file.
